


Wrong Number

by altschmerzes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Concussions, Confusion, Early in Canon, Gen, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Dean Winchester, Major Character Injury, Rescue, Whump, rufus is JEWISH and i will not REST until nobody forgets this, sam not actually featured but discussed and thought about enough that he warranted tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 04:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altschmerzes/pseuds/altschmerzes
Summary: The hunt was never supposed to go this way. Dean was just out interviewing witnesses, Sam hours away, when the monster they're after sets upon him, sending him over the side of a steep-walled ravine. He has just enough left in him to hit dial on his phone before he loses consciousness. The voice that wakes him is not the one he expected.(written for red_b_rackham for the supernatural summer gen exchange for the prompt of dean and an unexpected rescue)





	Wrong Number

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_b_rackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/gifts).

> Set early season 1/2. For the prompt "Dean has a gritty monster fight that leaves him badly injured. He's somewhere remote, all alone, struggling, and manages to make a phone call before he passes out. Somebody finds him, helps him, patches him up. (But it's not to Sam or Bobby - somebody unexpected.)"
> 
> as always, it was an absolute delight and a pleasure to participate in spn summer gen, and i got the most lovely prompts to work with, so thank you so much to red_b_rackham for making it an awesome one. enjoy everyone, and drop me a line if you liked it!

Dean had barely known the name of the monster of the week when he and Sam had started hunting it, and that was _before_ he fell off a cliff. Now, flat on his back staring up at a sky marbled with increasingly angry looking clouds, Dean couldn’t name the thing if his life depended on it. At that thought, there’s a breathless chuckle that rattles around his lungs, followed by searing pain that catches any remaining air and seizes it in his throat.

_If his life depended on it._ Well. His life depends on something, but naming the creature laying ten feet away from him, dead as a doornail, isn’t it.

That’s the consolation Dean supposes, in the addled, meandering way a person supposes things when heavily concussed, that he can take from this whole disaster. At the very least, when he’d gone over the edge of where the grass fell away into rock and dirt and scragged scrub brush and damn near gotten his insides scrambled so bad they fell out his ears, the ugly brute who’d been terrorizing hikers and teenagers messing around in the woods had gotten what was coming to it, too. Dean wishes that could’ve happened _before_ it almost killed him, but hey, he’ll take what he can get in life.

With a groan, he rolls onto one side, squinting around at the nondescript patch of rock and dirt he’d finally come to a stop in. It’s just that, rock and dirt, with a few rust-red stains that seem to have seeped out from where what Dean has decided to call the demon bobcat clawed him over the ribs. There’s quite a bit more red than he had been expecting, actually, and as he levers one elbow under his battered torso in an attempt to sit up, a rush of lightheadedness strikes him so hard it knocks him flat on his back just as if it had been another physical blow.

_Alright,_ Dean thinks, when the white spots in his vision cede ground back to the slate grey sky and the rushing in his ears fades to be replaced with the busy quiet of deep nature. First thing’s first, catalogue his condition. Concentrating really hard, ignoring the pounding in his skull that seems to intensify with every thought he has, he counts the current problems. _Concussion. Blood loss. Fell down a cliff. Everything hurts. Might die?_

This is the part where Sam shows up. This is the part where Sam shows up, and his head peeks over the edge of the cliff face, shouting for Dean, asking if he’s okay and where the demon bobcat is at (though college boy would no doubt use its full Latin name or whatever), and absolutely busts a gasket when he sees Dean, sprawled down on the ground in his current condition. This is the part where Sam shows up and freaks out and scrambles down to him, manhandling him to an excessive degree as he assesses the damage, holds Dean’s head in those ridiculous bear paws he calls hands, says Dean’s name probably more times than is strictly necessary in that panicky little voice that means he’s really, _really_ scared. This is the part where Sam shows up and freaks out until the immediate danger is gone and they’re in the car on the way home, which is when the fear will turn into relief with a touch of irritation and he’ll snap at Dean and call him an idiot for… well, he’ll find a reason.

Sam does not show up.

Sam does not show up because Sam isn’t here, Sam isn’t within two hours of here, he’s at some university talking to one of the biology and ecology professors with the more fringe side interests, and Dean was supposed to be interviewing the handful of hardy nutjobs that actually live up in this secluded corner of nowhere. Because the thing about these demon bobcats is, they’re not really supposed to exist. Oh sure, nothing Dean deals with on a daily freakin’ basis is _supposed_ to exist, but these things really, _really_ aren’t supposed to.

It’s a ninety-ten split, Bobby had said, of whether it’s going to just be an actual rabid specimen of local fauna, or if it’s gonna actually be one of these critters, but the trick is they have to be investigated nevertheless, because if it _does_ turn out to be one, it’s bad news all over town. They breed like rabbits, attack humans on sight without exception, and can’t be killed except by something containing both lead _and_ silver. The point is, this wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, or Dean never would’ve gone alone. If they’d thought it was a threat, if they’d thought the thing was real, Sam would’ve been here.

Except it had been real. And Sam isn’t there. And Dean is alone, crumpled in a bruised and bleeding heap on the ground, alone with no help for miles. At least the thing is dead, he’ll be grateful for that much.

After allowing himself approximately fifteen seconds to squeeze his eyes tight shut and stew in the pain and unfairness and sheer frustration of it all, Dean opens them back up and grits his teeth to try once more at getting up. There’s nothing else to it - he’s gotta dig into whatever reserves of sheer stubborn determination have kept him from biting dust up to this point, haul out some more, and make it out of this ravine.

Sam will never forgive him if he doesn’t.

It becomes very quickly very clear that he isn’t going to be able to make it out alone. There’s too much damage, from both the fight with the demoncat and the subsequent long walk off a short trail, and he can’t so much as get to his feet. Dean makes it as far as his hands and knees, head swimming and every inch of his body ferociously chastising him for the effort, before it’s made starkly obvious to him that this is exactly as far as he’s going to get. He looks around, blinking furiously to clear his vision, and finally spots what he’s been scrambling around trying to find.

Dean’s cellphone is maybe ten feet away in an upwards trajectory, proving once more that if there is a God, then He hates Dean personally and specifically. It’s a long and difficult journey to cross those ten feet and close one hand, shaking from exhaustion and the spidery jolts of pain shooting down his arm and through is fingers, around the only slightly cracked piece of miracle technology. By some feat he manages to snap it open, clicking down through contacts past so many different components of the alphabet that he begins to hate the letter ‘S’ for having the audacity to occur two thirds of the way through it.

Finally, there it is, blinking at the bottom of the small screen. SAM. His finger slips on the down key, his own blood making it too slick to entirely control where it lands, and somehow, despite this, the phone starts ringing. His hearing is beginning to go out by that point, replaced with that persistent rush, and his vision is spotty again, and it’s by the bare skin of his teeth he manages to hold onto consciousness long enough to register that someone has picked up.

“Sam,” he rasps into the phone. “Sammy. Fell. I fell."

The last thing Dean thinks before he loses his grip on the world and slides off a very different type of cliff, is _I really hope it doesn’t start to rain._

Dark.

Dark.

Dark.

“I’m telling you, Dean Winchester, you’d better open your eyes right now. I did _not_ drive all the way out here and hike down this whole hill for no reason. Come on, I know you’re in there.”

A crack of light stabs straight into Dean’s brainstem when he squints one eye open, confused and disoriented when the voice that pulls him up out of the dark and back into his thudding, aching reality is most definitely, undeniably _not_ Sam. His vision, what sliver of it he allows to register, slowly sharpens and focuses, showing him first a clear view of a sky that has grown an even darker, angrier grey, and then a face. It would’ve been the last face Dean would’ve expected to see, but that would’ve required it to be on the list at all, and he can’t say that, if given ample consideration time and several minutes to write, ‘Rufus Turner’ would’ve made it into his enumeration of potential saviors.

“R-” Dean clears his throat. It tastes like blood and dust and he grimaces, then tries again. “Rufus?”

“No,” the man deadpans from where he’s crouched down next to Dean’s prone body, “it’s the Tooth Fairy.”

Rolling his head to the side, Dean closes his eyes again and groans. “Go ‘way.”

“Good, you’re alive enough to be grumpy, that means you’re alive enough to get up. C’mon.”

Complying at least as far as dragging his eyes open again, Dean peers up at Bobby’s best friend and tries to work out, as the question finally occurs to him, what _Rufus_ is doing here when he’d called Sam. He rolls his head the other direction, gaze roaming until it lands on the phone screen, where the address book is still pulled up, the cursor blinking over the name he had called. Which isn’t Sam at all, but rather the name before his, the last entry in the ‘R’ section.

“Oh,” he says. “Oops.”

“Meant to call Sam, I reckon, going off what you were babbling when I picked up the phone. Which you’re lucky I did, by the way.” Rufus shifts, gravel crunching under his boots, and Dean feels a hand touch his shoulder. “How bad did that thing tear you up, huh?”

“‘Scuse me,” Dean complains as Rufus pokes around, assessing injuries on his own without waiting for the answer. “One ‘f us is dead, ‘n’ it isn’t me. So.”

“Yeah, you’re a real winner.”

A warm palm tilts Dean’s head towards the older hunter hunkered down next to him. He scrunches up his face and tries to turn away, already tired of being conscious and feeling the strong pull of the dark coaxing him back down. When you’re not awake, he figures, you can’t feel the fact that you got all shook up like an Etch-A-Sketch whose ten year old artist was dissatisfied with their masterpiece.

“Hey,” Rufus says, voice sharp and sudden. The palm on Dean’s face turns into the flat of Rufus’ fingers, tapping firmly. “Keep your eyes open, slick, we gotta get up. Gotta get you back to civilization, where there’s doctors and whatnot. Means first we gotta get you up. So come on. It’s time to get up.”

It must take too long for Dean to answer, because something about Rufus’ attitude changes, small but abrupt and noticeable.

“Hey,” he says again, giving Dean’s shoulder a little shake. “You’re gonna get up or you’re gonna die, and you’re not gonna die, ‘cause if you die then your old man is gonna make my life _hell,_ and I don’t wanna see what that’s gonna look like, understand?”

That gets Dean’s attention. He pushes himself up on an elbow, jaw clenched, and frowns at Rufus, who helps him along, getting an arm around his back to support him when his own strength falters.

“My… John?” He hadn’t known Rufus knew John, at least in any kind of meaningful way.

“John, what… No, Bobby, I meant Bobby.” Rufus shakes his head and glances up at the sky where the clouds have reached critical mass. “So like I said, we need to get a move on. Sky’s gonna crack open any minute now.”

The process of making it from where Dean fell back to where Rufus had been forced to park the car along the trail is long and difficult, with the threat of a sudden downpour hanging over their heads the entire way. Rufus grumbles the entire time, muttering to himself in a tone too low for Dean to entirely make out. He’s too focused on getting his legs to cooperate long enough to put one foot in front of the other without bleeding out in the process to spare any time on deciphering the same kind of irritated old man thinking-out-loud he’s been hearing from Bobby since he can remember. It’s comforting, in a way. Familiar. At least until he registers that what he’s hearing isn’t English.

“That Latin?” he manages through winded lungs. “Trying to… to exorcise the storm?”

“Hebrew,” Rufus fires back. “Praying we’ll get your dumb ass off this mountain before it hits.”

The words are harsh but the hands all but carrying Dean back to the car aren’t. There’s a care in the way Rufus is holding him up, grip tight but deliberate. Dean’s eyes stutter closed and he stumbles a few times, and each time Rufus is there, catching him around the waist and hoisting him back up to continue on their way. There’s a quiet ‘watch it’ hissed at him, but Rufus doesn’t let him fall back down the ravine, and Dean is grateful for it. He’s learned by now you can’t take that sort of thing for granted, and Rufus can mutter whatever he’d like as long as he keeps standing, for whatever loyalty to whoever it’s to, between Dean and the fall back down and surely to his death this time.

The car rumbles under him in the comforting, distant roar of an old engine in good condition, working hard but more than capable of getting the job done. Pain echoes around Dean’s body in waves, ebbing and surging in what at least becomes a predictable pattern, and the worn passenger seat of Rufus’ clunker morphs into one of the most comfortable places he’s ever rested. Past worrying about bleeding on the interior, he lets his head fall back, wincing at the sensation much akin to a pickaxe, and waits for the throbbing to subside.

As he rides out the aftershocks of the immense task of sitting down and relaxing back into the seat, Rufus keeps steadily driving onward, guiding the car around the winding, graveled mountainous roads as smoothly as possible. The vehicle is going too evenly over the rough terrain for him to be taking anything but extreme care in his driving, and a completely different kind of ache squeezes in Dean’s bruised chest.

“Thanks Rufus,” Dean mumbles, out of energy to keep his eyes open. “I owe you.”

“Damn right you do,” comes Rufus’ voice in return. It could be the concussion or the exhaustion but Dean can’t hear even a hint of actual bite in the words. “Owe me a bottle of Johnnie is what.”

The corner of Dean’s mouth lifts slightly into the faint imitation of a smile. There’s a soft patter against the windshield as the first of the rain starts to fall.


End file.
